Runner who died had been `very fit'

Cause remains to be determined

October 09, 2001|By Amy E. Nevala, Tribune staff reporter.

Luke Roach and his brother Patrick ran side by side in the Chicago Marathon on Sunday until they reached Columbus Drive and Roosevelt Road, the 26-mile marker. They high-fived each other, and Patrick sprinted the remaining two-tenths of a mile to the finish, then turned to look for his brother.

Luke Roach never made it.

A moment after his 20-year-old brother ran ahead, Luke Roach, 22, staggered, collapsed, got up and fell again, Dr. Greg Ewert, race medical director, said Monday. Two spectators, including a physician and an off-duty Chicago police officer, rushed to the runner's side and found the Seattle man in cardiac arrest.

They performed cardiopulmonary resuscitation, which paramedics continued while they transported Roach to Northwestern Memorial Hospital, where he was pronounced dead.

"His temperature was way above the norm," 107 degrees, Ewert said.

Relatives said Luke voiced no complaints about feeling ill during the run. His uncle, Patrick Roach, described him as an avid athlete who read books about marathon training and worked summers at a Montana ranch.

"He had no history of medical problems--that's the real shock of it," his uncle said, adding that his nephew was not taking any medications.

An autopsy has been performed, but the cause of death awaits further study, a spokesman from the Cook County medical examiner's office said Monday.

Preliminary results show the death may have been heat-related, medical officials said, though he temperature was in the 50s during the race.

Ewert said heat-related illnesses during marathons are not uncommon, though heat-related deaths are rare.

"During one Chicago marathon it snowed, and we still saw people with hyperthermia," illnesses such as heat stroke or heat exhaustion, he said.

Ewert said that on Sunday another runner, a man in his mid-40s running with a physician friend, had an apparent heart attack during the race. The friend did CPR until paramedics arrived.

The man was in critical condition Monday at Mercy Hospital and Medical Center, a hospital spokeswoman said.

Family members said Roach had always been athletic, a high school soccer star and an intramural soccer and softball player at his Montana college. He was applying to medical schools and worked at the University of Washington, conducting research on new treatments for chronic hepatitis.

A cousin, RoseAnne Droesch, called him "very fit" and said he was smart about conditioning for the race.

"He loved Chicago and he was so excited about his first marathon," Droesch said.

This year, marathon officials added more ambulances and medical stations to the course as a precaution after Danny Towns, a geologist from Edmond, Okla., died last year, apparently of cardiac arrest.

In the 1998 marathon, Kelly Barrett, 43, a pediatric dentist from Littleton, Colo., died of hyponutremia, or a low sodium level, when she apparently drank too much water while running.

Barrett's death was the first since the marathon began in 1977.

"This is not an easy sport, and there are risks associated with marathon running," said Dr. Lloyd Klein, a cardiologist at Rush-Presbyterian-St. Luke's Medical Center. Although minor injuries, including shin splints, muscle strain, stress fractures and dehydration, are common, serious injuries or death are "extremely rare."

He said runners need more education about stopping when their bodies say "no more."

"Embarrassment of not finishing makes them keep running when they start feeling chest pressure, dizziness, nausea. These are warning signals that something is wrong," Klein said.

This year's marathon began with 31,871 runners, which was an event record and almost 3,000 more entrants than last year.